Chapter Text
so it’s summer, so it’s suicide,
so we’re helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool
It’s like drowning—shallow heaving gasps as the water fills his lungs. It never gets any easier: the changes, the new dressing rooms, the unfamiliar roster. The crushing feeling of disappointment whenever he’s told that they don’t want him anymore, traded for someone who isn’t half as good as he is but twice as easy to get along with because he doesn’t feel like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
september 2008
It started with Texas, it started with the Q, and it started with Jack.
Jack locked himself in a bathroom the night before the draft, and then showed up in Kenny’s bed in the middle of the night, a rod of steel between his shoulders. They didn’t kiss in the morning; Jack didn’t look back. The night of the draft, they went one and two and the Aces had the captain they were looking for—and Kent realized what the world had been dying to tell him from day one: that he was second best. No one wanted a nobody from New York who couldn’t get along with his team for a month into the season before being sent down to the Star’s farm team.
Kent learned real quick that he wasn’t made to look good in the color green.
It was awkward and uncomfortable, doubly so once Kent showed up at camp and absolutely decimated everyone, but couldn’t string two nice words together. Coach didn’t hesitate to remind him that he wasn’t “some fucking big shot” just because he went second in the draft. He gritted his teeth and tried desperately to find some chemistry with the linemates he was given, because though he could make anything find the back of the net, the passes had to connect first. He was the only rookie to be given a single room because no one else had wanted to room with him. They called him stuck up and big headed behind his back– that he made it through camp in the first place was a miracle in and of itself.
It wasn’t that Kent didn’t want to get along with the guys on his team, it was just…. He had always been the charming one, the one that got along with everyone and made friends easily, snagged invites to parties Jack didn’t even think twice about.
Now? He didn’t know what happened, where it went wrong. It had all come to a crashing halt. Ever since the night before the draft, Jack hadn’t said a word to him. Never took Kent’s calls, didn’t respond to his texts, refused to call back or get in touch even when Kent left messages with Alicia. It was sudden, deafening, radio silence.
(History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.)
october 2010
“Parson! ” Coach barked. Coach was always “Coach”, no matter who it was or what team Kent found himself on. It didn’t matter what team Kent was on, or who was his coach this time, but Coach would always be just Coach; it made switching things around every couple of months a little easier. There were articles about the number of teams Kent had gone through in the past two years alone (four), and nothing, he learned, was more embarrassing than calling your new coach by the old one’s name. So Kent kept it simple and kept from giving the guys even more shit to humiliate him for.
“Yes, Coach?” said Kent, as he skated over and pulled off his gloves, stick in the crook of his elbow. He’d seen that face before– he knew that face. It’s the “you’re getting traded, but I don’t want to say it on the ice in front of everyone” face. Kent knew what came next. (I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours. )
“Front office,” Coach said, quieter. Kent nodded, shuffled off the ice as gracefully as he could manage, and breathed a sigh of relief. He had requested a trade weeks ago and all hell had broken loose when the guys had found out. All the stuff in his cubby had been fucked , people refused to pass to him until Coach ripped them all a new one after a particularly brutal game. They were not “fucking playing monkey in the middle, you pathetic, sweaty sacks of shit.”
Kent was drinking and drowning more than usual and all he wanted was to get out; the call from the front office couldn’t have come soon enough.
An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It’s thinking of love.
It’s thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That’s a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.
Providence is small. Kind of... quaint. It reminds Kent of the coastal towns he would see when the team would drive out closer to the ocean for tourneys as a kid. Everything smells like salt, and it wraps itself around Kent like a familiar hand on the back of his neck– he can’t seem to shake it off. The accent sounds closer to home than anything he’s heard in a real long time. It loosens something in the tight set of his shoulders. The trees are all dipped in gold, as the last touches of sun start to completely disappear from view over the horizon and the warmth of the late afternoon sun rises into the night. The crisp air fees better on his skin than any weather Houston ever produced. All these years later and the feeling of dry heat all these years later and the feeling of a heat sogo dry it was cooking him alive still hasn't left him.
The ride from the airport is a short one—he’s dropped off with his bags and a gnawing hunger in his stomach in front of a highrise in downtown Providence. He takes a deep breath that does nothing to keep his hands from shaking, and texts the number he got from the front office yesterday as he walks in to greet the doorman. This guy is going to house him until either the Falconers figure out he isn’t worth it or he gets a place of his own (Kent’s betting on the former).
Me +13055554830
Hey it’s Kent, I’m downstairs
Another breath: it probably looks weird standing in the lobby with all his worldly possessions at his feet in an old hockey bag he’s hand since juniors, ripped and patched in places but still big enough to carry everything he needs, his carry on suitcase for away games, a leather laptop bag Kent picked up after buying his mom a house with his first signing bonus, and another bag filled with miscellaneous shit that he’s picked up over the years and refuses to let go. There’s a look on his face of panic and resignation. It doesn’t take long for his phone to chime with an answering text, and yet the wait felt like an eternity, sweat pooling at his lower back and making his palms tacky despite the steadily dropping October temperature.
Jeff Troy +14015550662
Hi! Sorry, was cooking dinner, I’ll be right down!
He licks his lips before running his teeth over the chapped bits, wincing at the feeling a little bit. It helps ground him, helps remind him he exists here, in this moment, right now. There’s nothing he can do, except maybe try not to fuck things up so completely with this team this time.
The paneled doors to the elevator open to reveal a handsome, grinning guy. Kent blinks once before letting the smile he knows shows too many teeth take over his face. He shuffles his hockey bag onto his shoulder in order to shake hands.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, you know, off the ice.” Jeff says, shaking Kent’s hand with one hand and scooping up the carry on with the other.
Kent stumbles, taken aback by yet another ready show of kindness from a guy he's spoken to exactly once— that being the night before, when Jeff called to let him that he had a guest room that was open to Kent for as long as he needed it, which Kent awkwardly accepted.
“Uh, thanks man, you too—uh. You don’t, uh, really gotta do that,” says Kent, grabbing the rest of his stuff and hefting up his hockey bag once more across his shoulder.
Jeff gives him a quizzical look, a little amused. His lips quirk up at the corner and one of his eyebrows copies it. It’s quick.
“What, be a nice person even though the majority of the league thinks you’re a snot?” Jeff turns, tapping his fob against the door, and misses Kent’s flinch. “Don’t worry, most of us don’t think that, though there are a few guys I think you’ve played with–briefly– and they didn’t have great things to say about you but, you know,” he shrugs, walking ahead. “People will get jealous of real talent.”
Kent hackles freeze in the middle of rising. He doesn’t know how to react to what Jeff’s saying. Does Jeff count himself among the people who do think he’s talented, or those who don’t? His shoulders are starting to ache from the weight of his luggage though, and Jeff has been holding the door open for him with a shit-eating grin on his face long enough that Kent figures he’ll have to take it at face value. He follows Jeff through the doors and to the elevator, noting the button he presses for the seventh floor. He tries to look anywhere but at Jeff.
“So, five teams in two years, eh?” says Jeff, leaning against the wall, the expression on his face softer.
“What about it?” spits Kent. He’s chosen to stare at the floor. The carpet is an ugly shade of brown, though Kent can’t imagine any pretty shades, really.
Jeff shrugs in his peripheral vision.
“Seems like a hard thing to go through, that’s all.” He says it easily, lightly: a simple fact.
Kent’s eyes snap up just as the doors open and Jeff steps out into the warmly lit hallway, reminding Kent of the gold dipped trees from earlier. It’s not very long: there are only two doors across from each and Jeff goes to the one on the left. He opens the door and steps inside with Kent’s carry-on, setting them down by the island in the kitchen, and then he toes off his shoes. Kent follows suit, leaning the bags in his hands against the ones already on the ground. He hopes that Jeff doesn’t hear the audible rumble from his stomach at the smell of whatever it was that Jeff has been cooking.
Jeff does hear it, and his bark of a laugh has Kent biting back a smile—still, he looks a little sheepish. Jeff gestures to the stove with his chin a bright smile.
“I hope you like spaghetti carbonara, I made enough for two.”
Kent nods his thanks, mute, and Jeff busies himself with plating their dinners, telling Kent where he can find glasses and forks. There’s a water pitcher in the fridge with a filter because Jeff has “this weird thing about drinking tap water, I just don't like the waste from plastic bottles.”
Jeff brings it up again once they’re seated and Kent has devoured half of his plate.
“I’m serious though,” says Jeff, waving his fork in Kent’s direction.
Kent tenses. His hand shakes and his fork clinks against the ceramic. “About?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Parson. The team isn’t going to give you shit because you’ve got a bad rep or whatever. I sure as hell am not going to treat you like you’re anything but... a guy.” Jeff holds Kent’s gaze for a moment (his eyes are bright and as blue as the sea), stern in a way that feels familiar to Kent, familiar enough that he almost flinches. Jeff’s not kidding, and he must want Kent to know that, to see it and acknowledge it. Yesterday morning Kent didn’t mean shit to him but now he’s offering…...Kent doesn’t know exactly what, but something more than a guest room.
Kent feels the muscles in his jaw straining and the handle of the fork is cutting into his palm. His whole body is as taut as a bowstring, ready to launch him out of his chair to the relative safety of his room, even if he hasn’t quite figured out which one is his yet.
He manages a tiny nod. It makes Jeff lean back into his chair and put his fork down, a bit more relaxed.
“Well then, welcome to the Providence Falconers, Kent Parson.”
It wasn’t until we were well past the middle of it
that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
far from being subverted,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
replete with the tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes
and not the doorways we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker than before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.
Jeff drives him to practice in the morning, the air colder than what Kent’s used to, and he grabs an extra hoodie to pull on as he walks out his door. The drive to the practice rink is short, Jeff humming along to the top 40 playing on the radio, not talking but leaving the door open for conversation if Kent wants it. He doesn’t.
When they’ve parked and gotten out into the practically freezing (in Kent’s opinion) garage, Jeff stops them to put a hand on Kent’s shoulder.
“It’s going to be fine, don’t worry.” He says, an easy smile unfolding itself across Jeff’s face. Kent huffs a snort and gives him a weak shrug in return. It’s not like he’s not used to this part: walking into a new dressing room, stepping out onto new ice, dealing with a whole different group of guys who he’s usually only met in passing.
Jeff rolls his eyes, but locks his car anyway and leads them to the dressing room, waving and saying hello to people they run into along the way. Kent manages a strained smile and says his hello’s and good morning’s to everyone who throws one his way, but he would definitely count himself as uncomfortable by the time they finally make it to the dressing room.
Kent is prepared for hostile glares. Kent is prepared for the cold shoulder from literally everyone in this room except for Jeff. Hell, Kent is prepared for a lack of cubby space for him.
What he’s not prepared for is Jeff hauling him by the shoulder so that Kent is standing in front of him, holding him there in place despite the abject terror that has taken over the entirety of Kent’s face, and for him to loudly proclaim that Kent’s “not an asshole guys, pay up.”
Kent’s head whips around to stare at Jeff, horror slipping away to be replaced with something more along the lines of indignation, but Jeff ignores him, penguin walking them over to the stall with “14 TROY” printed neatly over it. Next to it there’s an entirely empty stall with “90 PARSON” printed in the very same white letters over the Falconer’s trademark blue with, what Kent can only assume is, his equipment waiting for him in a brand new Falconer’s bag.
The guys laugh and rib at Jeff, saying it’s too soon to call the end of the bet, and throw out “hey new guy!” at Kent as they all start getting dressed. Kent calls back weak hey’s and sup’s, manages to get himself dressed without putting the wrong skate on each foot, Jeff keeping up a steady stream of chatter in his right ear all the while. Iit isn’t until he’s taping his stick up that someone other than Jeff comes over to talk to him.
“H-hey.” It’s a rookie, barely 18, so not that much younger than Kent, but new enough that the kid is clearly a little freaked about sharing a dressing a dressing room with Kent. He’s taller than Kent is, but so is most of the league, with mousy brown hair that’s falling into his eyes in curls, and pale green eyes that look like they manage to stay one color most of the time (unlike Kent’s own). There’s a nasty bruise spreading its way across the kid’s left cheekbone, and he can’t stop fidgeting.
“Sup,” Kent leans his stick against the side of the cubby and holds a hand out to shake. The kid’s eyes widen and he hastens to stick his hand out too, grabbing Kent’s enthusiastically to shake.
“I’m Asher– Asher Hayes. I, uh, play right wing.” Asher stutters out, smiling.
Kent manages a smile that’s genuine.
“Nice, that’s what I used to play in the Q.” He picks his stick back up and continues taping it, noticing that Asher is already ready to go out on the ice– most of the guys are in fact, but they seem to be waiting around for something.
“I know! You were, like, wicked awesome man!” Asher abruptly realizes his enthusiasm and tries to tone it down with a hand to the back of the neck and a blush flushing across his exposed skin. “I, uh, never got a chance to play in the Q,” he pauses for a moment, before looking down at his skates. “I was really lucky I got drafted at all actually.”
Kent’s smile dims somewhat; this is a feeling he knows and lives with. The gnawing feeling of not being good enough, of having to prove yourself and hanging on by your fingernails even when they don’t seem to be holding you anywhere. Kent stands up, getting a little in Asher’s space, and casually grabs his stick with his left hand before looking up to meet Asher’s eye, still a few inches above him despite the extra height his skates provide.
The room seems to collectively hold its breath, wary of what Kent might say to the rookie they obviously care enough about if they were dragging themselves to the ice like this. All eyes are on Kent and Asher, but Kent’s ignoring them in favor of holding Asher’s gaze, the same way Jeff had made him pay attention last night, and exhales quietly.
“But you made it, didn't you? You’re here, and that’s really what matters, playing for an NHL team and doing what you love. That’s the important part, right?” Kent says, reaching out for a fist bump.
Asher exhales in a rush and bumps Kent’s fist right back, a monster grin stretching across his face as he does. The effect on the room is instantaneous: people start moving to the door and Kent catches a few smiles his way, guys nodding their heads in approval.
“Yeah, yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Kent’s shoulders loosen and Asher leads the way out onto the ice, now calmed down a bit, and they take a lap around the rink together. They don’t talk much, but Asher volunteers a little information about himself: he’s from Wisconsin, middle kid, the rest of his family doesn’t really “do” hockey but they’re happy he’s doing something he loves. Kent catches on that the financial strain of hockey was something that had really been holding him back, but he had gotten lucky and was scouted while playing for his high school team; the Falconers decided to take a chance on him.
Coach calls for them to all meet him at center ice, and gives the briefest of nods to Kent where he’s standing next to Asher. He has Kent watch for a while, before he starts throwing Kent with different wingers, playing him center like he has been since he started in the NHL. He never really understood it, how everyone had collectively decided to change the position he played once he was no longer on a line with Jack. He had never fully become comfortable with the change, but halfway through practice, Coach puts him on a line with Jeff on his left and Asher on his right and everything just clicks .
[ Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
the way we look like animals,
his skin barely keeping him inside.]
Their passes flow so smoothly between them, running water through a rushing stream, that Kent manages to put both Jeff and Asher in perfect positions to score, repeatedly. They manage a scrimmage where Kent could have sworn he could have sent a shot to Asher with his eyes closed and it still would have hit his stick exactly where Kent had meant it to. They absolutely decimate every other line Coach throws against them, leaving Asher giddy and Jeff with a pleased looking smirk on his face.
They take a break for water and so the boys can catch their breaths before they go into one on one drills, and a few guys skate over to Asher to chirp him good-naturedly about finally getting his sea-legs. Jeff skates up to Kent and bumps his shoulder with his own.
“Look at you, getting along with people and making friends,” he says with a smile, leaning against the bench next to Kent.
“Oh, fuck off.” Kent tells him mildly, smiling a little around his water bottle. So far, only Asher and Jeff have actually had conversations with Kent, but no one has been openly hostile to him either. The guys seem to be giving him space to adjust, get a feel for the way this team had put itself together in the past couple of years. It had been introduced in an entry draft along with the Las Vegas Aces, but had managed to have a slightly more successful season than Vegas last year, going out in the first round of the playoffs, despite Jack attempting to single handedly drag Vegas to the cup. The thought of Jack twists something painful in Kent’s gut, and Jeff must see it on his face because next thing Kent knows, he’s being dragged over to where most of the players have congregated around Asher playing monkey in the middle with a spare puck. It’s more of a drill than a game, and when the boys see Kent and Jeff approaching they call out “Yo, Parser’s too good with his hands, someone make him play with one hand!”
Kent laughs and obliges, but after the second time he steals the puck, someone else yells out, “non-dominant hand, asshole” and Kent can’t help but let a shit-eating grin slip out at that. He makes a show of switching his stick to his left hand and putting his right hand behind his back, and from then on, barely touches the puck. The guys chirp and laugh, and the tension seems to ease from Kent’s frame as he finds himself enjoying spending time with everyone.
Coach calls them back to order after a little while, pleased that they used their time not actively skating doing something that at least improves their stick handling. He has the D-pairs work on blocking shots from Kent for the next hour, letting Kent show off a little more than he’s used to. The guys don’t seem to hold much against him as Kent gets more and more pucks by them, in fact, the opposite occurs: even when they can’t manage to stop Kent, they cheer themselves up in the knowledge that few people could, really, and at least they’re not going against him in an actual game anymore.
Slowly, Kent learns the names of the guys he was playing with. Auden Davies and Waylon Graves, or Auds and Dubs respectively, were their first pair D-men, drafted just last year and the brick wall of Providence’s defense. Sebastien Reyes and Lindsay Beaulieu, or Sebsy and Beau to the team, who spoke in their own weird conglomeration of Spanish and French that pretty much only they could understand, and moved faster than Kent would have ever thought. James Hall and Nathan Shore, Jamie and Shorey, the only other rookies to make it past camp other than Asher, but seemed to have built solid rapport between the two of them that made it a little difficult to get past them if Kent wasn’t paying attention. Noah Spring rounds them out, one of the more dependable goalies Kent’s gotten to work with over the years. He’s got that uncomfortable look in his eye that most goalies have, Kent’s noticed, but he doesn’t seem to take too personally that Kent’s able to get past some of his best blocks.
While Kent is working on his ability to get the puck past his own D-men, offering bits and pieces of advice, things he knows would trip himself up to the guys to help them get better at stopping the puck before it even got near the crease. Auds and Dubs act like one mind in two bodies, and after the third piece of advice, Kent has to really push himself to make it past them and into the crease. Sebsy is a nasty checker, and Beau just laughs at Kent when Kent swipes the puck out from between his legs one too many times for Sebsy’s liking. Shorey was older than Kent, had played college hockey at BU before signing with the Falconers undrafted, and he had a couple of inches on Kent to boot. He had a beautiful wrist shot that he usually sent right to Jamie that slipped right past Kent on occasion. By the end of the drills, Kent is joking and laughing with everyone as if he has been with them for years, not just a few hours. There is a glimmer of his old self standing there on the ice, all smiles and sweat streaked hair. The happy feel that came with helping someone get better at hockey, get better at watching his back, at making sure if someone better than him faced them in a game, it wouldn’t be this defense they’d be tearing down.
The rest of the guys practice their face-offs and their sprints on the other side of the ice, occasionally skating over to provide colorful commentary about how the boys were progressing against Kent’s impressive speed and soft hands. Kent recognizes a few of them, either big names for the Falconers or people he’s played with before. Alexei Mashkov, Luke Salero, and Branston Watkins all fall under the big name category, while Alexandre Lavoie and Olle Nilsson were guys he played with briefly on separate teams in the past two years. Liam Brower, who Kent hasn’t seen since, hell, the first year of the Q, is there, short as anything and doing his damndest to vault onto Kyle Tommely’s back with both of their skates on; he isn’t succeeding. Kent hasn’t met either Nikolai Vasiliev or Charles Picard, and while he assumes that they’ve heard some of the more unsavory things being thrown around about him in the league, they’re nothing but friendly faces and easy chirps to him.
Eventually, practice ends and the boys head to the showers to get the stink of the longer workout they had today off. Before Kent can step off the ice, a hand grabs at his elbow. He turns to face their backup goalie, Devin Summers (somewhere in the back of Kent’s mind is a poorly made weather joke that’s probably been made a hundred times), noting his nervous stance and awkward grip on his stick through the goalie pads, helmet in the crook of his elbow. Kent sees Jeff waiting up for him by the hallway and he nods him on, getting a sly little grin in return before he ducks out. Kent gives Devin his full attention, leaning against the boards to get a better look at his face.
“Hey man,” he starts, trying to be casual. “Devin right?”
Devin seems startled that Kent even knows his name and Kent counts it as a win in his book.
“Uh, yeah.”
“What can I do for you, man?”
“I, uh, just, uh,” Devin runs his hands through his hair; a nervous habit, Kent guesses. “I just wanted to ask if you’d, uh, if you wouldn’t mind, uh, running some drills with me, at, uh, some point?”
Kent takes a moment to process, confusion undoubtedly plain on his face. He had never been asked to work with people one on one before, people always thought he was too cocky, too full of himself to ever be considered a good teacher. They didn’t know about the summers he spent coaching Pee-Wee during the Q, how he had taught his little sister Beth how to skate before she had decided she liked figure skating more than hockey, how the one thing he always looked forward to every year was the day when they brought in local kids to skate with whatever team he was on at the time. Most people never really gave Kent the chance to show he was more than just good at hockey, he knew how to make others good at hockey too.
“Me?” Is all he manages to get out, the charisma that had been flowing so freely earlier gone in the face of such a simple and honest request.
“Yes?” Devin responds, all nervousness and uncertainty.
“Why?” Kent can hear his own voice chirping him in his head at his own eloquence, but in the state of shock he’s in, he can’t manage anything more.
“Uh, because I saw how you worked with the other guys earlier? The pointers you gave them and the advice that made it harder for you to get past them? And I thought maybe you could help me too?” Devin’s taken to twisting his stick between his hands, uncomfortably shifting weight from one leg to another, yet somehow managing to stay in place on the ice.
Kent takes a deep breath and blinks once, clearing the confusion off his face.
“I want you to know, up front, that I have absolutely no experience with teaching goalies how to do anything ,” he pauses, taking another breath to steel himself. “But, yeah, sure, just let me know what times work for you and we can talk to Coach about getting us extra ice time.”
It takes a moment for Kent’s words to sink in, but when they do, a look of pure joy bursts on his face and he lets out a loud whoop that echoes through the practice rink. He moves forward to scoop Kent up in a hug and spin him around, and Kent’s so caught off guard that it startles a laugh out of him as the colors and the lights of the rink flash around him in a blur.
The fact of his pulse,
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
not to disturb the air around him.